Why has the government been instituted at all? Because the passions of men will not conform to the dictates of reason and justice without constraint.

No free man shall be taken or imprisoned or dispossessed or outlawed or exiled, or in any way destroyed, nor will we go upon him, nor will we send against him except by the lawful judgment of his peers or by the law of the land.

I work for a government I despise for ends I think criminal.

Politics is the art of preventing people from taking part in affairs which properly concern them.

Every communist must grasp the truth: “Political power grows out of the barrel of a gun.”

I am invariably of the politics of the people at whose table I sit, or beneath whose roof I sleep.

Do that which consists in taking no action, and order will prevail.

No human life, not even the life of a hermit, is possible without a world which directly or indirectly testifies to the presence of other human beings.

A real leader is somebody who can help us overcome the limitations of our own individual laziness and selfishness and weakness and fear and get us to do better, harder things than we can get ourselves to do on our own.

Democracy is the recurrent suspicion that more than half of the people are right more than half of the time.

The affairs of the world are no more than so much trickery, and a man who toils for money or honor or whatever else in deference to the wishes of others, rather than because his own desire or needs lead him to do so, will always be a fool.

In politics, what begins in fear usually ends in folly.

I am no courtesan, nor moderator, nor tribune, nor defender of the people: I am myself the people.